Unique digital nomad travel adventures from around the U.S.
Travel is full of memorable and unique experiences. Many of them you could never recreate even if you tried (and there are some you never want to). That said, I rarely have an experience I would describe as once-in-a-lifetime. It just feels like that should …
I am very excited to share this road trip itinerary for three days on the Oregon coast. I take no credit for its amazingness. It was given to me by a former local and all-around Oregon expert. She really came through and provided the greatest …
Fun work trips are possible. I promise. Do you have to travel for work? If the answer is yes, below are some suggestions for how to make your next business trip a little more enjoyable…provided you can find some free time of course.
A couple of times a year, I get/have to travel for work. These trips are usually a week or so in length to some place in the U.S. In fact, I have never traveled internationally for work. Needless to say, the “perks,” as we tend to think of them, are few for me when it comes to business travel. I have no elite status with any sort of airline and my miles and points add up very slowly. That is not to say I do not have a good time when I travel for work. It just means I have to make my own fun and work a little bit to take advantage of the situation. Here are my suggestions:
Even if you are too busy working to get out and explore, you still have to eat. So you might as well make it a unique experience.
Every region of the country (and world, for that matter) is known for something culinary. We all know New England is known for its clam chowder, Chicago for its deep-dish pizza and the South for its BBQ. Even here in old Idaho, we are known for our potatoes. You just have to do a little research. Or better yet, ask a local. Did you know Cincinnati is known for its chili? I sure did not until I visited a friend there. Now, chili is the first thing I think of when I think of Cincinnati—probably because it tasted so good! Search out which restaurants or dishes are famous and make sure to try them. Knowing I do not have to pay for it is just an added bonus.
Another bonus to business travel is the opportunity to eat at very expensive restaurants occasionally. You know the kind I am talking about, those places where your entrée does not come with any sides. Instead, those sides cost about as much as you would normally pay for an entrée back home. I do not eat at expensive restaurants often. But every now and then, I get asked to join a client dinner. Since the experience is a rare one, I almost always say yes and I have had the opportunity to eat at some really great, high-end restaurants courtesy of work.
If I am not joining my coworkers or a client for dinner, I typically keep dinner simple and within walking distance to my hotel. Since the company pays for my meal, I sometimes like to spring for dessert—often at a different location entirely. On a recent trip to Sacramento, I discovered a little gem called Rick’s Dessert Diner and made myself sick off a slice of their decadent cake. Experiences like this help to make fun work trips.
Some people are nervous about eating out on solo trips because they will have to eat by themselves. R and I have both reached a point in our lives where this is no longer a big deal (you get used to it after a while). But if you tend to feel lonely, remember you can almost always eat at the the bar. The bartender is often friendly and you get your food quickly. If you like sports, there is usually a game on that you can watch while you dine.
If you are staying in a city, it might seem obvious to get out and explore. In fact, you might have to in order to eat or attend meetings. But not every business trip, or chosen hotel anyway, is located in a city center. However, no matter where I am staying, I am usually pleasantly surprised by what I find when I get out and walk a bit.
After my boss asked me to work out of our New Jersey office for a few weeks, I started arranging for lodging and a car. I needed to find a hotel with a kitchen so that I did not have to eat every meal out for the next six weeks. I ended up going with a Residence Inn not too far from the office. After settling in, I started going on walks and exploring the area. Aside from the gorgeous houses and trees in the area, I also found out there was a town about a half mile from my hotel. It was small, but it had everything I needed including a grocery store, pharmacy and restaurants. Best of all, it was home to a train stop. I was able to walk to the station and catch a ride into NYC to see my friend any weekend I was free.
During a business trip to Anaheim, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my hotel was within walking distance to Disneyland. I just happened to have a completely free day on that trip as well. Needless to say, I went ahead and visited Mickey on that free day.
Do not be afraid to set out on foot and explore your new and temporary neighborhood. Who knows what you will discover.
When I travel for work, my days are usually quite busy. But most of the time, my nights and weekends are free. I do not mind watching TV and decompressing in my hotel room. However, after a couple of days of this, I am usually bored. Luckily, extracurricular activities abound all over the U.S. and make for fun work trips.
I once took a cake decorating class from Carlo’s Bake Shop (you know, the Cake Boss) while in New Jersey as well as a paint and sip class while in Sacramento. And then there are the various yoga classes I have attended while on the road. Classes like these usually require registration and a fee, but they can be a good way to pass the time and experience something new. They can also be a good way to meet locals and find out unique things about the area.
If a class is not your thing, you can always try a local spa. A massage while traveling for work is never a bad idea. Websites like Travelzoo and Groupon often offer spa deals in major U.S. cities. They also offer deals for entertainment. Idaho is not exactly a major stopping point for most bands. Whenever I go on a trip for work, I always check to see if a band I like is going to be performing in the area. I have gotten lucky a few times and have been able to see some of my favorite acts performing in new-to-me venues.
I cannot pretend to be a big baseball fan. However, I do enjoy taking in a game if I get the chance and thanks to various works trips, I have had the opportunity to see the Chicago Cubs, Baltimore Orioles and Atlanta Braves all play on their home turf. A game is always a good way to spend the evening in a new town.
I love a good road trip. Thanks to some work obligations, I have been able to go on some pretty fun ones. A couple of years ago, I attended a conference in Portland for work. After the conference ended, I rented a car and spent the weekend driving down the Oregon coast. At the end of my voyage, I returned the rental car and flew home. I did not have to take any time off or buy a plan ticket. It was lovely.
On other occasions, I have already had a rental car because of my work schedule and location. This happened on an extended work trip to the East Coast. Ironically, R had a business trip scheduled on the East Coast during that same time. I met her at the airport and we spent a long weekend road tripping through Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont before heading back to work. Since work had paid for our flights and my rental car, we just had to split gas and lodging between the two of us—making it a very affordable road trip through New England.
Instead of flying directly into Baltimore to attend a conference, I flew into Pittsburgh a day or so early and caught the train. I arrived in Baltimore in time to attend the conference, but first I enjoyed a lovely train ride through some country I had never seen before. It took some planning and I had to make sure flight prices into Pittsburgh were comparable to flight prices into Baltimore (turns out, they were cheaper so I actually saved the company some money). However, it was worth the effort to see a new place and visit a new city.
If you are traveling to an urban area you are not renting a car, then the train, or even the public transportation system, is something you should really take advantage of. You might be surprised at the places you can go with just a little extra planning. Whenever I visit New Jersey for work, I make a point to go into New York City (via public transportation) to visit a good friend of mine. It requires a bit of coordination, but it is well worth the effort.
I love it when work trips bring me to where my friends and family live. I mentioned my friend in New York City whom I try to visit whenever I go to our New Jersey office. Lucky me, I also have a good friend in Orlando. Over the years, a particular conference has taken me to Orlando a half dozen times. Each trip, I get to spend time with that friend and it makes any hassles I have traveling for work worth it.
I have also used work trip locations as a jumping off point to meet up with friends. Sometimes, after my conference or meetings wrap up, I fly to an entirely different city to meet up with a friend. It can often be cheaper for me to visit someone that way since I just pay the difference from the original, roundtrip ticket that my company bought.
Note: I do not charge my time, gas or any other expenses to the company when I am playing. Never take advantage of your employer. It’s not cool.
Business travel does not have to be a drag and there are ways to ensure you have fun work trips. Every state, city and/or region has something unique to offer. You just have to do a little research to find out what those unique offers are, and then coordinate your time to take advantage of them.
When I was getting ready to go on my first international trip as an adult, my mom’s sister, Aunt P, called me up with an offer I couldn’t refuse. She told me that before she left on a big trip the year prior, her husband …
Other tourists. They are that element of travel we sometimes forget to think about until we find ourselves surrounded. No matter where you go in the world (but especially at must-see places) it is difficult to avoid buses full of people as eager as you …
Holidays are a funny thing. Every culture has them and sometimes they cross country boundaries (e.g. Easter, Christmas) and are celebrated in many countries. But sometimes they are unique to that particular country. It’s easy to think other countries’ holidays sound crazy when you did not grow up with them. For example, every December in the small town of Chichicastenango, Guatemala, locals celebrate St. Thomas’ Day by swinging around on ropes attached to giant wooden poles. Or in August in Bunol, Spain, thousands of people get into a giant foodfight and throw tomatoes at each other.
Pole swinging and tomato tossing aren’t something I’m used to, growing up in the United States. However, part of traveling is seeing how other people live and holidays are an important part of a culture. By learning about other countries’ holidays, we can catch a glimpse of what normal life is like in that culture. Below are three examples of holidays B and I have experienced.
Disclaimer: I am currently celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday, which is probably why holidays are on my mind. Sure most people in the United States are familiar with this particular holiday, but as I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve realized it is pretty bizarre. Not the origins; as any American school aged child will tell you, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated when the pilgrims shared their bounty with the natives of the land a year after the natives had shown them how to cultivate crops and survive in this new world. The idea of friendship and overeating is how present day Americans celebrate this holiday, but things have morphed a little since those early days in the 1600s.
Now, Thanksgiving means eating turkey and pumpkin pie, watching football or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on T.V. and perhaps playing a pickup game of flag football in the morning. Even more strangely, Thanksgiving holiday has become the kickoff of the holiday Christmas season, and as such, has combined with a shopping experience called ‘Black Friday.’ My family tradition is for the interested shoppers to spend hours combing through the newspaper ads on Thanksgiving Day and plan a strategy for hitting the deals early the next morning. Very early most of the time–this morning I was in line at 5:30 a.m. after scoring a deal on a coveted item. This is a pretty big departure from the spartan beginnings of celebrating having enough food to not starve. Oh well, go ‘murica.
A few years ago, B and S unexpectedly found themselves celebrating Carnival in Venice. Venice had been part of the scheduled tour of Europe, but they were surprised when they arrived and got to experience the craziness. Carnival, like many holidays, is based on a religion. It is a celebration that happens right before Lent in Catholicism. Lent is a six week period that ends at Easter and during which people abstain from certain foods and drinks and actions in a period of reflection leading up to Easter Sunday. Carnival is like the last hurrah before settling into several weeks of austerity. Might as well go out with a bang, no?
Venice has the most famous Carnival out of them all and has become a holiday where everyone dresses up with intricate masks and eats and drinks and works to be very merry. The origins of the Carnival in Venice go back hundreds of years and were possibly an extension of pre-Christian celebrations. Festivities grew and reached a highpoint in the 1700s until the powers that be decided the Carnival was no good. During the next hundred and fifty years, people celebrated privately until it was reinstated about 50 years ago. It has certainly come back with a vengeance; as B and S could attest, several millions of people flock to Venice to take part in the holiday.
A few years ago when B, C, and I crossed the Baltic Sea from Estonia to Finland, we didn’t realize we were in for a first-hand look at a the way Finns celebrate a holiday. May Day is pretty common in lots of cultures and its origins go way, way back as ancient celebrants expressed appreciation that winter was finally over and good times were about to be had. We have it in the United States, but I’ve never paid much attention when May 1 rolls around. However, in Finland, May Day is a Big-capital D-Deal.
We first noticed something fishy was going on when we saw young people walking around in colorful overall, kind of like the kind the Ghostbusters wore, only instead of gray they were all different colors and had patches all over them. We were then stopped in our tracks as several parades full of these young, overall clad hooligans. It really hit home, though, when we arrived in the main square and watched, along with several hundred thousand others, as a group of the overall kids were suspended in the air and dumped soap on a poor statue. We felt bad for the statue, but it seems this has been going on for some time so it is probably good for it–an annual bath. Oh, I forgot to mention another interesting fashion choice that was on every third person: sailor hats. Yep, Sailor Hats.
Vappu has morphed in Finland to become a celebration of graduating students about to enter the workforce. The patches on their overalls are typically of different companies and schools they are looking at and the colors represent different fields of study. The sailor hats are kind of like the mortarboard graduation hats we wear here, only Finns keep them handy and bust them out every Vappu. We saw several hats on older folks that were turned a little dingy with age. (The hats were dingy, the older Finns all seemed very spry.) Vappu did end up closing down most of Helsinki so we weren’t able to see a few things (or I wasn’t able to buy the reindeer fur rug I wanted). However, I’ll probably remember the shenanigans in that center square more than I would remember any museum we could have gone to.
Holidays in different cultures can seem very strange to us. Heck, our own holidays are very strange when you sit down and think about them. It’s always a good practice to do a little research before you head out on a trip to see if there are any major holidays that could interfere with your plans. If you forget to do this, though, or are excited about the prospect of celebrating something new in a different country, our advice for you is to enjoy the bizarre-ness that is before you. At one point during Vappu, a nostalgic Finnish man wrapped me up in a warm embrace while I froze in surprise. C tried to extract me, B tried to take a picture. Now we laugh about it–holidays definitely make things interesting!
![Travel Planning for a Trip [Australia Specifically]](https://i0.wp.com/janeseestheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Australia4.jpg?resize=760%2C400&ssl=1)
The dates are set, the plane ticket is bought and the travel fund is steadily growing. It is now time to start travel planning and focusing on the details of your trip. Not long ago, I wrote a post about what I am doing to …
Let’s talk about travel shoes for women. Travel = walking. A lot of walking. Having sturdy, comfortable shoes is crucial since you need to be able to wear them all day, every day. If they are cute, well, that is an added bonus. But honestly, …
Vacations full of fresh fruit and beaches always sound really good to me, but to be honest, I’m just not a hot weather kind of Jane. I prefer sweaters to swimsuits; they are softer and I can eat ice cream without feeling guilty. That being said, sometimes you have to put up with the heat if you want to see cool places. No matter how you shake it, Hawaii is going to be hot. It can still be worth it though, if you know some strategies for handling hot weather. If you are like me and start to sweat at 85 degrees, here are some things that might help you survive your next trip to paradise.
Like the handsome cowboy in ‘Country Strong’ croons, timing is everything. If the place you are desperately wanting to visit has seasonal weather, go when it isn’t hot. Seems totally obvious, right? I love Italy. I had a wonderful time visiting in April and May, but even then we had some days that were pretty steamy. B, on the other hand, last visited Italy during February. She had a very different packing list than I did. Sure she didn’t go swimming in the Mediterranean Sea like I did, but she did experience Venice during Carnival–not a bad trade off for not being sweaty. Bonus: lots of people don’t like to travel internationally during the winter months. You will get much better deals and much fewer tourists if you go during the low season.
Clothes–like you before you give a public speech–need to breathe. We’ve talked about this before on this blog; it really pays dividends to purchase clothes that are made of materials that survive in hot weather. In a sticky situation, cotton is most definitely not king. Instead, opt for natural or synthetic blends that will help wick sweat off of you. It might sound crazy, but wool does a very good job of this. Now I’m not saying you should pack a wool sweater for your next trip to Fiji. I am saying you should pick up some thin merino wool underwear, though. Seems counterintuitive, but if a material takes liquid off your body, it will allow some air to get in there and will keep you cooler. Oh, and speaking of letting air get in there, I highly recommend skirts in the hot weather. A little breeze around your legs will cool you off in a jiffy.
We are made mostly of water + when we are hot we sweat = we need to replace the lost water in our bodies. Heat exhaustion is a real downer on a trip. Even beyond the immediate feeling of relief you get when you drink some cold water when you are hot, your body will handle the heat much better if your are properly hydrated. That being said, make sure you drink water that is safe to drink. We are big proponents of reusable water bottles here at Jane Sees, but we are not big fans of giardia. A compromise could be to buy gallons of water and refill your water bottle yourself along the way. On our tour bus in Ecuador we had three seats: one for B, one for me, and one for our three-gallon jug of water.
When you are hot, air blowing on you makes you feel better. These are things we all know. What you might not think about is that you can very easily pack a small fan and in hot situations bust it out. You can even pretend to be a sexy flamenco dancer and open it with flair. It will get the job done of cooling you off that much faster.
When you are hot, not much sounds better than jumping into some cold water. It feels really great too, as long as you stay in the water. Here’s a crazy thought: instead of taking a cold shower, you should actually turn the dial to the middle instead of the far left. Here’s why: taking a warm shower can lower body temperature. Cold water can make you shiver, which is your body’s way of heating you up. You definitely don’t want your body to kick into that mode. Here’s my additional (albeit not scientifically proven) rational: if the water is hotter than the temperature outside of the water, the temperature outside will feel cooler to me when I turn the water off.
If you’ve taken a basic first aid class, you will have learned that one of the quickest ways to cool off someone who is overheated is to place something cool in specific areas of victim’s body. To cool yourself off in a hurry, hold a glass of ice water against your wrist or the back of your neck. You could also do this in your groin area or armpits, but you might want to reserve these maneuvers for extreme situations only or risk getting a few raised eyebrows.
This is gross, but not as gross as dripping sweat. If you carry around a rag or handkerchief you can use this to wipe the sweat out of your eyes. If you are really hot, you can get this rag wet and then use it to wipe your face.
You’ve heard of work smarter, not harder. This can be applied to beating the heat. Again, we all know it is cooler in the shade than in the sun. If you do a little proper planning, you can use the shade to your benefit. At an outdoor music festival this summer, B and I noticed that some trucks along the edge of the grassy area provided a sliver of shade around 1:00 p.m. We reasoned that as the sun set further we would get even more shade. So while everyone else got close to the stage, we set up camp right next to those trucks away from everyone else. Sure, we looked weird for a little while. But a few hours later while they baked, we had a little patch of blessed relief.
When we were touring the Castillo San Felipe del Morro in old San Juan, Puerto Rico, we walked along the outside of the massive walls that protected the people inside from people outside. We were walking along this path in the morning and were in pretty much direct sunlight the entire way. Once we got on the other side I realized that had we decided to walk on the other side first, we would have been shaded the entire time. Proper planning fail.
Air blowing on wet skin cools you off. You can use sweat as the liquid in this scenario or you can use a spray bottle to do this job. Think of the long lines at amusement parks. The best part of the line is when you are under those mister things; a spray bottle brings the mister with you. I’ve seen combo fan/spray bottle apparatuses that do both at once. This probably feels awesome, but might not be so practical if you are trying to pack light. Do what you gotta do to survive, though.
I have a friend who didn’t have air conditioning in her car during a hot Idaho summer. Instead she would keep the windows rolled down and spray herself and her kids as they rolled along. The spray got them wet and the wind from the windows cooled them off as part of a 1-2 punch. It might not have been as sophisticated as normal AC, but it helped them survive.
When all other tricks fail, just get yourself a cold smoothie. One of the best things about the tropics is the tropical fruit, so you might as well embrace it. My personal faves are piña colada, passion fruit, or watermelon/pineapple. One of the most brilliant inventions for resort visiting is the swim up bar. This way you don’t even have to leave the water to get your icy fruit beverage. Genius.
Some people are built for the heat and others are not. If you are in the latter category, you just have to make the best of the situation and deal–otherwise you might miss out on a really great trip. The strategies for handling hot weather above will help you along your path to acceptance. Oh, one last thing, make sure to pack your anti-perspirant!
I have been lucky enough to find some great travel companions over the years. But I understand that it can sometimes be difficult to find like-minded people to travel and explore this world with. Unfortunately, I do not think there is a magical formula to …